Archive for 2009

Today we have launched a free white paper, Business Guide to Blogging – this looks at how businesses can promote themselves using blogging, funnily enough. All you need to do is click here to download the guide in PDF format.

Here’s my introduction to the guide:

“The SEOptimise blog began as a way of marketing our search engine optimisation services. We used it initially to attract customers, add to the site’s content and showcase our expertise. It still does all those things, of course, but it has also become so much more.

Vote for us - Top Marketer of 2009Very quick post, but Investp are now running the second year of their online marketers of the year poll.

I was quite surprised, but very honored to be nominated amongst some great guys – including fellow SEOptimise blogger Tadeusz Szewczyk. Last years vote was very popular and I’d encourage that SEOptimise readers take part in this and of course any votes for myself or Tad would be greatly appreciated! ;)

In today’s weekly Twitter Friday column I want to compare the 3 most common retweet buttons for WordPress blogs. A retweet button is a button that not only retweets the particular post it was clicked one but also displays how many people tweeted that link: On click these buttons also lead to a list of those who tweeted the link.

I have compared 5 categories:

  1. data retention – how long does the service store the tweet/retweets so that you can access them
  2. customization – in as far are you allowed t change the appearance of both button and the retweets
  3. URL shortener/s – which URL shortening service/s are used or supported
  4. issues – things that seemingly don’t work
  5. extra features – features the others don’t have or you wouldn’t expect

Google SEO Tools: Keyword Ideas

Some people, even at Google, still think that Google hates SEO. In some cases it really does. At the same time Google loves SEO as actions speak louder than words. Google provides not a few, not several but by now 10 free Google SEO tools everybody should use. I remember the times when we had none of them. Today we have an abundance of data Google allows us to mine.

I very rarely write about individual website’s which are making mistakes online, but looking at the ASK restaurants website yesterday I was very surprised to see how a well-known UK brand has paid little or no attention to their search strategy.

ASK Restaurants

Being a popular restaurant chain there are many opportunities to attract potential customers on the web and at the moment ASK do not appear to be taking advantage of these.

Biz Stone

Biz Stone by Joi

In case you don’t read my Twitter Friday column regularly let me say it again: I’m always quite enthusiastic about the way Twitter embraces business users. There is no other social media site that makes me as comfortable while using it.

This week Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced paid premium accounts for businesses.

Tumblr beats Digg and StumbleUpon

Google Trends for Tumblr, Digg and StumbleUpon

Last year I made about 30 predictions on Web trends for 2009. Many of them came true, others, of course, did not. Still even in those cases the ideas from the Web trends list were useful. Even those trends that disappeared from the radar or haven’t got main stream yet should be watched closely as they might pop up again sooner or later.

So I decided to make a new Web trends list, this time for 2010.

A few weeks ago I did a training course for a client who is running their own lead generation campaign in AdWords. In my experience, clients want two things from lead generation campaigns:

  1. More leads
  2. A lower cost per lead.

AdWords makes it very easy to report on these metrics but what AdWords beginners often struggle with is how to change them. I made them a flow chart to show what changes they could make, and how these changes effect the other metrics:

This is pretty hard to explain if you cant see it. Sorry blind guy :-(

Click the picture for a bigger version

I’m sure that if you are an AdWords guru then you’ll be able to draw a lot more lines on the chart but I think I’ve covered the most important stuff.

Usage Example

  • Suppose you want to improve (reduce) the cost per conversion.
  • Following the arrows backwards shows that you can either improve the conversion rate or reduce the average CPC.
  • Going back another level tells you that the landing page and the ad text influence the conversion rate so you can change one or both of these.
  • Alternatively you can reduce the average CPC either by reducing the CPC bid or by improving the quality score black box.

Around 5 years ago I read the book Who Moved my Cheese. It’s a very simple, short story about the different methods of dealing with change. I’ve recently re-read this, (it only takes about an hour so I’d definitely recommend reading if you haven’t already) – but I realised that there’s a lot which can be applied to day-to-day life in search marketing.

Cheese
Image Credit: Flickr

They say an internet year is the equalivent to 7 normal years, I’m sure a search engine marketing year may be more! So basically if you don’t like change – you’re probably in the wrong job!

Retweet feature

A few months ago I wrote for the first time about the new internal retweet feature on Twitter. I didn’t like it. Now it turns out as the feature is being gradually rolled out that seemingly most people don’t like it. So this time I won’t annoy you with another “it sucks” post I will try to suggest solutions where the new retweet feature actually sucks.

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